For many years oilfield pipe threads have been cleaned with hand-held wire brushes and more recently, power-driven rotary brushes have come into use. Some rotary brushes are highly portable but allow strong cleaning fluids to be thrown about which is environmentally unacceptable. Other rotary brush systems have provision to collect spent cleaning fluids and residue but are not truly portable and cannot be readily used for general oilfield service on horizontal or vertical pipe under all weather oilfield conditions.
Gibson (U.S. Pat. No. 3,435,479) discloses a radial adjustment of rotary brushes but no spent fluid collection means.
Hitt (U.S. Pat. No. 3,405,417) claims a factory type roll cleaning apparatus having a flexible drive to the roll and a "sleeve" containing stationary brushes and spent fluid collection means. However, to prevent "sleeve 30" from rotating, a roll frame member must be present to abut "bracket 58" to prevent rotation of "sleeve 30" with the roll and no unitary assembly is disclosed.
McCartney (U.S. Pat. No. 3,436,783) shows means to introduce fluid to rotary brushes driven by a conventional hand-held power drill but discloses no spent fluid collection means.
Scott (U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,062) and Toelke (U.S. Pat. No. 4,011,617) deal with stationary systems for use on the floor of a drilling rig where a lower pipe member is present to prevent rotation of the housing as rotary brushes are driven by a close coupled power unit.
Although prior art discloses the use of rotary brushes to clean pipe threads and also discloses the recovery of cleaning fluids, none of such prior art discloses a single, compact and lightweight unit that can be manually placed over the end of a vertical pipe or a horizontal pipe in an open field so as to clean the pipe end both chemically and mechanically while recovering both residue and cleaning fluids so as to protect the environment.